164 History of the English Landed Interest. 



tlie lands iii chivalry, and an excise on certain malt liquors — h.ad 

 been proposed, the latter finally receiving the assent of the 

 community. Recent research has, however, attempted (un- 

 successfully, we maintain) to prove that the enactment of the 

 excise duties, having preceded the abolition of Feudalism, 

 could not have been designed as a substitute for the Crown 

 dues on the lands in chivalry. The excise was, in fact, an 

 invention of the Long Parliament, being imposed for the first 

 time in 1643, extended subsequently so as to include a 

 heterogeneous collection of commodities (amongst which both 

 strong waters and malt liquors figure), and rearranged in 1656. 

 The abolition of the feudal dues was sanctioned by Parliament 

 in 1645-6, again sanctioned in 1656, and finally confirmed by 

 12 Car. II. c. 24, in 1660. Moreover, the customs and excise 

 imposts of 1660 were substantially the same as those of 1656,^ 

 and therefore the inference would naturally be, as we stated 

 above, that the excise was imposed prior to the abolition of 

 military tenures. Favourable to the results of later research 

 as this evidence of dates appears, it must fail before the 

 stubborn fact that a debate took place in the House of 

 Commons on November 21st, 1660,^ the very year of the 

 Restoration, in which the proposal of the excise duties as a 

 commutation revenue for the feudal dues was carried against 

 that of the fixed land tax by the small majority of two 

 voices. 



Was then the land tax the later substitute of the excise 

 duties, as suggested in the Financial Reformer's Almanack 

 for 1880 ? If the comparison of the date of its origin with that 

 of the excise duties were conclusive evidence, we might at once 

 reply in the negative. For its earlier form was the subsidy 

 raised on the reputed value of the estates of the people, as far 

 back as Tudor times, and worth in 1566, £120,000, and in 

 1598, £75,000. But we have shown in the instance above 

 that a comparison of the dates of origin is not conclusive 



' English Land and English Landlords, App. I., by A. C. H. Owen. 

 G. Brodrick. 



"^ Comp. Hallam, Const. Hist., chap. xi. p. 313, who quotes from Pari. 

 Hist., p. 151. 



